The most remarkable point about The Foreigner is how the skills of the aging 63 year-old Chan continue to magnetize.
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Who beats Jackie Chan when it comes to action comedy movies? The only true answer: no one. But with The Foreigner, the action has taken on a decidedly grim role - it's still there, but no longer leavened with the funnyman laughs that often accompany a traditional Jackie Chan film.
Directed by Martin Campbell (Casino Royale), The Foreigner stars Chan as Quan, a humble restaurant-owner in London who is galvanised into action a-la Liam Neeson, Taken-style when a terrorist bomb attack kills his teenage daughter.
Grieving and hunting for those responsible in his search for answers, Quan quickly gets embroiled with British government official Liam Hennessy (Pierce Brosnan), who has ties to the elusive killers. Hennessy initially brushes Quan off as a harmless victim, but comes to realise that his willingness to achieve justice for his daughter leads to increasingly perilous consequences involving improvised explosive devices, traps and more.
Audiences will undoubtedly spot some of Chan's signatures: for example, he begins The Foreigner like most of his other films by giving himself a disadvantage and starting beneath his opponents. Quan is ignored by police officers and government officials in his search, and has to fight his way back to the top to seek his answers.
Yet his performance does falter - entirely due to a plot point - as his transformation from domestic father to ruthless killer comes across as stilted. It's not until much later in the film when audiences finally learn about Quan's own chequered past. Elsewhere, the plot similarly stumbles through a convoluted quasi-conspiracy involving the British government, political ties and family double-crossing. It's hard to keep up with the piling bodies, so the intended climax fizzles to the end instead of building to an expected crescendo.
The most remarkable point about The Foreigner is how the skills of the aging 63 year-old Chan continue to magnetize. Remarking in a recent interview that he would continue to do action films because "action films are still popular around the world" and that he wants to show the audience he "can still do a lot of things", it'll be no surprise to see this film pull in the crowds yet again. Let's hope Chan stays injury-free long enough to keep the action rolling in.
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